SortStack #1038 — 2029-04-12

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. A massive earthquake and tsunami destroy Lisbon 1755

   Striking on All Saints' Day while churches were full, it killed tens of thousands and shook European philosophy — Voltaire used it to attack the idea of a perfect world.

2. Archduke Franz Ferdinand is assassinated in Sarajevo, triggering the First World War 1914

   The archduke's driver took a wrong turn and stalled directly in front of Gavrilo Princip, handing the assassin a second chance after the morning's bomb attempt failed.

3. Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human in space 1961

   His single orbit lasted 108 minutes, and he parachuted to the ground separately from his capsule — landing in a field where a farmer and her granddaughter stared in disbelief.

4. Larry Page and Sergey Brin found Google 1998

   The company started in Susan Wojcicki's garage, and its name is a misspelling of 'googol' — the number one followed by a hundred zeros.

5. The Bitcoin network launches with its first block 2009

   Satoshi Nakamoto embedded a newspaper headline about bank bailouts into the very first block — a permanent timestamp and a pointed message.

6. SpaceX launches its Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time 2018

   The test payload was Elon Musk's own red Tesla Roadster, with a spacesuited mannequin named Starman at the wheel — it is still orbiting the Sun.

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